Earning the Brownie Girl Scout Senses Try-It

Our 5 senses play a major role in life. We see, touch, hear, taste, and smell things to know what they are. Take one sense away and you will have to use the other senses in a more advanced fashion to understand what you are looking at. For example, you see a lemon and know it is a lemon. What if your sight was gone? Could you touch it and see if it is a lemon? Maybe but it might also be a lime. I bet you could taste it or smell it and tell it is a lemon. What if you are watching TV and you know what show it is? Try turning on the TV with no sight. Can you tell what show you are watching by listening to the characters? if you have heard them before, probably. If the show is unfamiliar, you will have to listen carefully and try to discern names and what they are doing by what the people are saying and any other sounds coming from the TV. These are good activities to get in tune with your other senses that you may take advantage of when you can use all 5 together.

Some other good activities are featured in the Senses Try-It. To earn this Try-It, girls must complete 4 activities. Well, there are 5 senses and only 4 activities are required, so you can choose to do more to include all senses or you can pick some of your favorites or let the girls decide which 4 they would like to work on. This is really fun to do as a troop because the girls will be able to engage with each other during the activities, however, they can also be done alone at home if required.

1. Hearing
Many animals depend on their ears to find food. They have very well developed hearing. If you concentrate on this activity with no other distractions, you might get more in tune with your hearing and develop a better ear to hear. Each girl will need to create their own pair of ears that will hear the ticking of a clock before anyone else. They can use their imagination and determine if they should be large or small or long or short. Give them paper plates, construction paper, newspaper, paper cups, cardboard rolls, scissors, string, and glue to allow them to create their new ears. After each girl is completed, you can take a ticking clock to the other end of the room. This works best if there is a large room. Each girl can sit in a row on one end of the room with their new ears being held up to their old ears. Each girl should close their eyes and concentrate listening for the ticking of the clock. You will slowly move closer to them and they will raise their hand when they hear the clock. The first person to raise their hand wins, but don’t tell them that because they may try to raise their hand before they hear it. Keep walking, however, and give each girl a chance to hear with their ears. Afterward, ask them what they would change, if anything, on their ears to make them better.

2. Smell
This activity is one of my favorites because the girls love to watch other girls have their hand at smelling things they can’t see. Or, if they do it all at the same time, they enjoy opening their eyes and seeing what it was they had smelled. Pick out several different scented items. How many you choose depends on how long you want to do this activity. You can try things like toothpaste, baby powder, cinnamon, lemon peel, onion pieces, sweaty socks, pepper, pet food, etc. Anything you can think of that the girls might or might not recognize the scent of. Don’t get into your spice shelf and make it too difficult for them. Put a little of each of the small items in the cups of an egg carton. It is best to break the cups apart before they sniff them so the scents don’t combine. I like to do it all together at the same time. Blindfold all the girls and give them each a chance to smell without showing them any objects beforehand. Take away the item and have the girls write down on a paper what they think it is. Make sure they don’t say it out loud. After you have went through all the items, ask what their answers are and show them what the item really was. This is funny to hear some of their answers and see their reactions after you have showed them what they have smelled!

3. Touch
Get two large paper sacks and fill each sack up with an item that is identical to an item in the other sack. You can chose some things like sponges, socks, mittens, pennies, dried beans, rubber bands, pens, spoons, etc. Shake the bags up and have each girl feel around in the bags to find matching items without looking. You can take turns at one bag or have a separate set of items for each girl.

4. Sight
Sometimes your eyes play tricks on you and you see things that aren’t there or aren’t what they appear to be. These are called optical illusions. Create your own type of simple optical illusion by completing this activity. You will need a piece of heavy paper cut into a 2″ square for each person and a pencil. Hold the paper so it looks like a diamond shape and draw an empty fishbowl in the middle of the paper. On the other side, in the middle of the paper draw the fish. Hold it up to the light and make sure you can see the fish inside the bowl from the other side. Tape the bottom diamond tip to the pencil lead tip. Hold the pencil upright between your hands and then rotate the pencil so the paper flips back and forth rapidly. Looking at the paper, you should see the fish in the bowl.

5. Taste
This one may be a little tricky. The point will be to locate places on your tongue where you taste sweet, sour, salty, and bitter flavors. In order to do this, you will first need to draw a map of your tongue on a piece of paper. Make large “U” shape for the tongue. In the center of the tongue, draw another “U.” At the base of this letter, draw one diagonal line on each end of the base to connect to the larger “U” that is the tongue. You will then have 4 sections of tongue on your paper. This is the tongue map. You will need to prepare this beforehand or help the girls with it as it may be confusing.

Next, you will want to gather sugar (sweet), vinegar (sour), salt (salty), and grapefruit juice (bitter). Place about 1 teaspoon each in separate small cups. Add a little water to each of the first three listed. Each girl will need their own cups of solution and their own cotton swabs. It might be helpful to have the girls take turns and test each others’ mouths or have a mirror so they can see where they are placing the swabs on their tongue. They should test each substance individually and dab it into the 4 sections like they drew on the paper. Once they taste the sweetness or whichever one they are doing, they will need to mark it on their map. They will need to rinse their mouths with water well between each sample change. When their maps are complete, they can compare them amongst the troop members and see if each person’s is different or the same.


People also view

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *